John of the Cross was born of godly parents at Fontiveros, in Spain. It began soon to appear that he was foreordained to be an acceptable servant unto the Virgin Mother of God. At five years of age he fell into a well, but the hand of the Mother of God took him up, and saved him from all hurt. So burning was his desire to suffer that when he was nine years old he gave up any softer bed, and used to lie on potsherds. In his youth he devoted himself as a servant in the hospital for the sick poor at Medina del Campo, and embraced with eager charity, the meanest offices there, his readiness likewise exciting others to imitate him. He obeyed the call to higher things, and entered the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, wherein, by command of his Superiors, he received Priest's Orders. By their leave and his own strong desire for the sternest discipline and the strictest life, he adopted the primitive Rule. Full of the memory of what our Lord suffered, he declared war against himself as his own worst enemy, and carried it on by depriving himself of sleep and food, by iron chains, by whips, and by every kind of self-torture. And in a little while he had crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts thereof. he was indeed worthy that holy Teresa should say of him that he was one of the purest and holiest souls by whom God was then enlightening his Church.

R. The Lord multiplied the fruit of his labours and defended him from his enemies, and kept him safe from those that lay in wait. * And gave him perpetual glory.V.The Lord guided the righteous in right paths, and shewed him the kingdom of God.R. And gave him perpetual glory.

V.Jube domne, (Dómine) benedícere.

V.Vouchsafe, Reverend Father (O Lord), thy blessing.

Benedíctio 5: Christus perpétuæ det nobis gáudia vitæ.R. Amen.

Benediction 5: May Christ bestow upon us the joys of life eternal.R. Amen.

The strange hardness of his life, and the might of his graces, joined to the unceasing concentration of his mind on God, had the effect of oftentimes subjecting him to daily and extraordinary trances. So burning was his love of God that the fire sometimes could not not be kept bound within, and brake forth, so that his face shone. The salvation of his neighbours was one of his dearest longings, and he was unwearied in preaching the Word of God, and in administering the Sacraments. As strong in so many good works, and glowing with zeal to make discipline harder, he was given by God to be an helpmeet to holy Teresa, and he aided her to set up again the primitive observance among the brethren of the Order of Mount Carmel, as she had already done among the sisters. In doing God's work, he and God's handmaid together went through toils that cannot be numbered. No discomforts of dangers held him back from going throughout all Spain to visit all and each of the convents which the care of that holy Virgin had founded, and in them, and in very many others erected by her means for spreading the renewed observance, he strengthened it by his word and ensample. He is indeed worthy to be reckoned second only to the holy Teresa as a professor and founder of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites.

R. The Lord loved him and adorned him; he clothed him with a robe of glory : *And crowned him at the gates of Paradise.V.The Lord hath put on him the breast-plate of faith, and hath adorned him.R.And crowned him at the gates of Paradise.

He remained throughout all his life a clean maid, and when some shameless woman tried to beguile his modesty, he not only foiled them, but gained them for Christ. In the judgment of the Apostolic See he was as much taught of God as was holy Teresa, for explaining God's hidden mysteries, and he wrote books of mystical theology filled with heavenly wisdom. Christ once asked him what reward he would have for so much work ; whereto he answered : Lord, that I may suffer, and be disesteemed for thy sake. He was very famous for his power over devils, whom he oftentimes scared out of men's bodies, for discerning of spirits, for the gift of prophecy, and for eminent miracles. He was extraordinarily lowly, and oftentimes entreated of the Lord that he might die in some place where he was unknown. In accordance with his prayer, he was sent to Ubeda. To crown his love of suffering, he bore uncomplainingly five open sores in his leg, running with water. In the year 1591, in the forty-ninth year of his age, being the day, and at the hour foretold by himself, after having in godly and holy wise received the Sacraments of the Church, hugging the image of that crucified Saviour of whom his heart and his mouth had been used to be full, he uttered the words : Into thy hands I commend my spirit, and fell asleep in the Lord. As his soul passed away it was received into a glorious cloud of fire. His body yielded a right sweet savour, and is still uncorrupt where it lieth, held in great honour, at Segovia. He was famous for very many miracles, both before and since his death, and Pope Benedict XIII numbered his name among those of the Saints. Pius XI, after consultation with the Congregation of Sacred Rites, declared him a doctor of the universal Church.

R. This is he which did according to all that God commanded him ; and God said unto him : Enter thou into my rest : *For thee have I seen righteous before me among all people.V.This is he which despised his life in this world, and is come unto an everlasting kingdom.R.For thee have I seen righteous before me among all people.V.Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.R.For thee have I seen righteous before me among all people.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Quaeritur: Would you care to possibly comment on this other excerpt about the Jews from the book The Light of the World.

Respondeo: This is a better example than the condom comment of a point in which "[i]t goes without saying that the Pope can have private opinions that are wrong," as the Holy Father himself admits in his book. The theologically objectionable point is the claim that the traditional Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews was erroneous because he realized the profound unity of the Old and New Testaments:

"... in such a way that one did not pray directly for the conversion of the Jews in a missionary sense."

The rest seems to amount to an unclear and rather circumlocutious pair of premises that are somehow being offered as support for the above conclusion. The argument contains little discernible propositional content by way of premises; it rather expresses a theologically misguided desire for ecumenism. (A desire cannot be false in the strict sense, just misguided or disordered.) But one can perhaps boil all that down to the proposition that there is a natural unity between Judaism and Christianity. This seems to be the hidden premise of the argument that he uses to get to the conclusion, i.e., the quote above. Thus, what the Pope offers us is an enthymeme (an implied syllogism), which we can reformulate into an explicit syllogism:

Major Premise: If there is a natural continuity between Judaism and Christianity, then we must not pray for the Jews' conversion in a 'missionary sense' --i.e., that they change from a false religion to the one, true religion.

Minor Premise: There is a natural continuity between Judaism and Christianity.

Conclusion: Therefore, we must not pray for the Jews' conversion in a 'missionary sense' (as the Old Missal does), but for the perfection of their religion (as the New Missal and Pope Benedict's 'proclamation of the Christian faith' does).

For the sake of precision, allow me to express my refutation of his reasoning as a scholastic distinction:

I concede the major. It is a statement of the self-evident proposition that one cannot convert from religion a to religion b if, in the ultimate analysis, a = b. Conversion (in the 'missionary sense') involves changing religions that are essentially distinct.

I distinguish the minor (i.e., this premise is true in one sense, but false in another). That there is a natural continuity between pre-Christian Judaism and Christianity, I concede; but that there is a natural continuity between modern Judaism and Christianity, I deny. The Holy Father's reasoning is faulty insofar as it does not take into account this important distinction. Pre-Christian Judaism, i.e., the religion of the Old Testament, is essentially the same religion as Christianity, the religion of the New Testament: Christianity is the perfection of pre-Christian Judaism. Pre-Christian Judaism prefigures Christianity; Christianity perfects Pre-Christian Judaism--every bit as much as the Old Testament prefigures the New, and the New perfects the Old.

But post-Christian Judaism, and I specifically mean the religion of the Jewish race after the destruction of the Temple, is a new religion distinct from the religion of the Old Testament. Judaism, in other words, underwent a sort of substantial change at that point. Not only was it redefined due to the impossibility of observing the Old Law (no Temple, no sacrifice, no Judaism); but also a new, anti-Christian element came into the definition of this new religion. The core of Jewish belief is no longer merely the awaiting of a Messias, but also the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is NOT that Messias. As a consequence, a modern Jew who thinks that Jesus IS the Messias is not considered a Jew by the Jews themselves. This shows that modern, i.e., post-Christian Judaism and Christianity are not continuous.

In short, pre-Christian Judaism is pro-Christianity, whereas modern Judaism is anti-Christian.

I distinguish the conclusion: That therefore, we must not pray for the pre-Christians Jews' conversion, I concede; but that we must not pray for the modern Jews' conversion, I deny. Given the distinction of the minor that I made above, the conclusion can only be true in the sense that we don't pray for the conversion of pre-Christian Jews. But they're all dead, so that's obviously not what the Pope means. In the other sense, the sense in which the Holy Father means it--that modern Jews cannot convert from their religion to Christianity, and the Old Missal is incorrect in praying for that intention--in this sense the conclusion is false.

The fact that the argument's conclusion is false can be stated positively: modern Judaism is a false religion and modern Jews, therefore, have the obligation to abandon their errors and accept the true religion revealed by God through Jesus Christ and the Church; consequently, the traditional liturgy does right in praying for their conversion:

Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.

Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish perfidy: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

4. You are of course familiar with the fact, Venerable Brethren, that a remarkably widespread revival of scholarly interest in the sacred liturgy took place towards the end of the last century and has continued through the early years of this one. The movement owed its rise to commendable private initiative and more particularly to the zealous and persistent labor of several monasteries within the distinguished Order of Saint Benedict. Thus there developed in this field among many European nations, and in lands beyond the seas as well, a rivalry as welcome as it was productive of results. Indeed, the salutary fruits of this rivalry among the scholars were plain for all to see, both in the sphere of the sacred sciences, where the liturgical rites of the Western and Eastern Church were made the object of extensive research and profound study, and in the spiritual life of considerable numbers of individual Christians.

5. The majestic ceremonies of the sacrifice of the altar became better known, understood and appreciated. With more widespread and more frequent reception of the sacraments, with the beauty of the liturgical prayers more fully savored, the worship of the Eucharist came to be regarded for what it really is: the fountain-head of genuine Christian devotion. Bolder relief was given likewise to the fact that all the faithful make up a single and very compact body with Christ for its Head, and that the Christian community is in duty bound to participate in the liturgical rites according to their station.

6. You are surely well aware that this Apostolic See has always made careful provision for the schooling of the people committed to its charge in the correct spirit and practice of the liturgy; and that it has been no less careful to insist that the sacred rites should be performed with due external dignity. In this connection We ourselves, in the course of our traditional address to the Lenten preachers of this gracious city of Rome in 1943, urged them warmly to exhort their respective hearers to more faithful participation in the eucharistic sacrifice. Only a short while previously, with the design of rendering the prayers of the liturgy more correctly understood and their truth and unction more easy to perceive, We arranged to have the Book of Psalms, which forms such an important part of these prayers in the Catholic Church, translated again into Latin from their original text.[8]

7. But while We derive no little satisfaction from the wholesome results of the movement just described, duty obliges Us to give serious attention to this "revival" as it is advocated in some quarters, and to take proper steps to preserve it at the outset from excess or outright perversion.